The invention relates to an apparatus for the dosing and dispensing of granular material, preferably granules having an approximately spherical shape, such as pellets or the like, into gelatin capsules with the aid of dosing chambers which are installed subsequent to a supply reservoir.
A multitude of devices for filling gelatin capsules with powder is known. An example of such devices is the one described in German Patent DT-PS No. 1,174,244 in which the capsule bottoms waiting to be filled are located in recesses within a rotating disc. During the cyclic rotation of this disc, the capsule bottoms first reach a filling station where the filling material drops into the capsule bottoms. In the next process step, the capsule bottoms are located directly under a tamping device whose tampers compress the powder contained in the capsule bottoms. The tamping process is followed by a renewed supply of powder which is again followed by tamping. This cycle is repeated until the capsule has been filled with the desired quantity of powder.
This method of filling, in which the air enclosed within the powder is displaced by tamping, is required for powder fills, but it cannot be used for the dosing and dispensing of granular material, particularly of pellets. This is the case because the pellets have a rigid core or may even be filled with fluid and would be compressed or destroyed by tamping. Furthermore, the nearly spherical granules do not enclose as much air as does powder.
Attempts have been made to dispense these pellets by the known slide-dosing principle, but these attempts have shown that even this known system is not really suitable for the dosing and dispensing of these pellets, because when the slide closes the associated dosing chamber, there is a possibility of slicing through one or more pellets.